


Captivus

by Demerite



Series: Trektober 2019 [18]
Category: Star Trek: Discovery
Genre: Away Mission Gone Wrong, Gen, Prison, Rescue Missions, Serious Injuries
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-19
Updated: 2019-10-19
Packaged: 2020-12-23 23:24:00
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,784
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21089531
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Demerite/pseuds/Demerite
Summary: "Ow. What happened?" Chris asks."You got shot, we got captured." Una says, concise as always, "You've been out for a couple of hours. No sign of anyone since they threw us in here."





	Captivus

**Author's Note:**

> For the Day 19 Prompt: Prison Scenario. 
> 
> WARNINGS: This fic contains descriptions of wounds as well as dead bodies, but no major character death (all characters who die are unnamed extras). There is some reference to torture, but it occurs offscreen. Please read at your own discretion.
> 
> I've tagged this as gen, but you could read it as shippy if you wanted to. There's a second part of this coming later in the month. 
> 
> [Captivus is Latin for prisoner, because we're 19 days in and I've lost my ability to think of creative titles]

"Plan?" Una hisses, phaser grasped in her right hand, scanning the treeline for their attackers. There's blood dripping onto her jacket from a long cut across her cheek, where she'd been clipped by flying debris when the attack had started, seemingly out of nowhere.

Chris shakes his head, unsure, one hand tight on the grip of his own phaser. They can't shoot at someone they can't see, hear, or otherwise perceive, and given that half the landing party are already dead, their only option is to remain in cover and hope they can wait it out if they want any hope or surviving this.

They wait, backs pressed to the cool bulk of the boulder, weapons drawn and senses alert for any further sign of danger, but there's nothing.

After twenty more minutes, Chris gives a cautious all clear, and they break cover. Nothing happens. No one shoots at their heads, so they move in tandem to check the bodies of their people. Neither of the two sprawled in the clearing by the shuttlecraft has made it, and the wounds they have sustained are hideous, ugly things, ragged and gaping at the edges. Chris pushes away the sadness and defeat and nausea that wells up inside of him. There will be a time to mourn later, but right now they need to survive.

He and Una move the bodies to the shuttle. They both get patches of dark blood on their uniforms in the process, but it's worth anything to be able to bring their people home one last time. Throughout the whole process, they're both checking their communicators regularly for contact from S'Len and West, the other members of their away team, but they get nothing, and a tricorder scan reveals no life signs in the immediate area.

They lock down the shuttle and start searching, spreading out but always remaining in sight of each other as they move between the trees and undergrowth. Chris finds Ensign West. _This was her first away mission, _he thinks, and for a moment he can't breathe. But he has to, he can't fall apart here. Ensign West's body joins those already in the shuttle, and he lays her down as gently as he had all the others.

They keep searching.

Lieutenant S'Len is tough, it anyone can survive an attack like this on their own, it's her, Chris knows, but after another half an hour of looking, there's still no sign of her. He's fearing they will have to give up hope and return to the shuttle when a low, sharp whistle from Una draws his attention.

When Chris joins her, she's examining a smear of grey-blue on the smooth trunk of a tree. S'Len, like all of her reptilian species, has grey-blue blood. They follow the trail, no tracks but for the smears and drops of blood, getting closer together the further they go. Even injured, S'Len has still tried to cover her tracks, and they lose her trail twice. But finally, they burst out of the forest into blindingly bright sunlight.

Chris blinks rapidly, squinting around. They've emerged on a rocky outcropping, about fifteen feet from a sheer cliff. Without approaching the edge, he has no way of telling how high up they are, or how far the ground might be over the edge.

His attention, however, isn't on the cliff, or the edge, or anything else but S'Len, who is slumped sideways against a large rock. Hey eyes are closed, and for a moment Chris thinks that they're too late, that he's lost her as well, but as they approach, one of her golden-orange eyes opens, just a little, and she lets out a low, menacing hiss, before seeing his face, or the uniform, and realising who it is.

"Captain..." She manages, the word coming out soft and strained.

Chris and Una drop to their knees on either side of her, Una already reaching for her tricorder.

One of S'Len's hands comes up, wrapping around his forearm, and he doesn't even think to shy away from her sharp claws. "I'm sorry." She chokes out, and he shakes his head.

"Don't." He tells her softly, "You're gonna be okay, it's all gonna be okay." He has no knowledge of if she's going to make it. He thinks not. But his instinct it to provide any scrap of comfort that he can.

"Humans..." She laughs, and the sound devolves into a pained hiss, "Always so optimistic." Her grip tightens on his arm, claws tearing the sleeve of his jacket, "Captain," For all that her voice is soft, it is also urgent, "I can see..." Her eyes close, and she forces them open, "I can see them."

Una is already on her feet, hand on her phaser, covering them in case of attack.

"What?" Chris asks, "Who? Lieutenant, who?"

S'Len draws a shaking breath. Her eyes, focused somewhere over Chris' shoulder, flutter closed again.

"Captain!" Una's voice is sharp, and at the same time, Chris is aware of movement to his left, where movement shouldn't be. Una is on his right. There shouldn't be anyone on his left at all.

Chris ducks down, pulling S'Len with him, behind the boulder. She kicks out with her legs, trying to help as much as she can, and they hunker down together.

"Number One?" Chris calls, because he can't see her and he is _not _going to lose another crewmember, not today.

"Captain!" S'Len says urgently, "I can _see _them!"

And suddenly, Chris gets it. He knows that she can see a different spectrum of light than humans can. She's not delusional, she's trying to tell him she can see the people shooting at them.

"Where?" He asks quickly.

"Your 10 o'clock, in front of the tree." S'Len manages, twisting to get a better look, "He's crouched down, maybe two feet in height." She falls back against the rock with a pained moan.

Chris passes over his communicator, "Tell Number One whatever you can." He orders, and she nods, raising the communicator, already speaking softly and quickly.

Focusing on the spot S'Len had indicated, Chris can't see anything. But he trusts his officers nad their judgement; if she says there's something there, he believes her. But he also believes in his own principles, and he's not going to just shoot without trying to communicate first. He's not that sort of person.

"Captain." S'Len hisses when he holsters his phaser and goes to stand, "They'll kill you!"

"I have to try." He murmurs, "Only when diplomacy fails do we shoot."

"I'd say diplomacy has already failed!" Una's voice is irritated through the communicator, "Sir, stay down!"

Chris raises his hands above his head, scans the clifftop. There's no sign of anyone, but they already know that whoever's shooting at him, they're able to camouflage or turn invisible or _something_. "I'm not here to hurt you." He calls, wondering if they even understand, "I'm here to talk."

The projectile fired from one of their weapons hitting him in the left shoulder probably should have come as a surprise. He stumbles back a half step, pain flaring outwards from the already bleeding wound. He's halfway through thinking _son of a bitch, that hurts _when darkness rushes up to greet him.

~*~

"Ow." He mumbles, dragging himself back to consciousness an indeterminate amount of time later. He's lying on his back on something cold and hard. Above him, he can see the juncture of a stone wall, and a stone ceiling. If he turns his head a little - a movement which sends pain shooting through his shoulder again - he can see a small, barred window. That's...never a good sign. Bars are almost always there to keep someone or something in. He tries to sit up, and the pain momentarily renders him dizzy, his vision going fuzzy at the edges, and he can't help the groan he lets out.

"Stay still." A voice says, and Number One leans over him, a hand pressed to his good shoulder to keep him in place, "I did what I could with the regen in my field pack, but I think the joint is damaged."

"What happened?" Chris asks her, obligingly laying still.

"You got shot, we got captured." Una says, concise as always, "You've been out for a couple of hours. No sign of anyone since they threw us in here."

"S'Len?"

Una looks stricken. "I don't know." She said, and there are tears in her eyes, "They didn't bring her in with us, I don't know..." She shakes her head, scrubbing at her eyes with the heel of her hand.

Chris tries to sit up again, and this time she helps him, steering clear of his bad shoulder until he can lean against the wall and loop his good arm around her. His left arm hangs at an awkward angle, and he does his best to tuck it in against his side, knowing he needs to find a way to support it sooner rather than later. If they make it back to the _Enterprise, _Phil is going to be pissed. If they make it back. 

For now, Chris just focuses on holding Una against him and not giving in to pain or anger or grief. He looks at Una, instead. She looks worn thin and exhausted, there's blood underneath her fingernails, and on her jacket, and dried in the cut on her face, which she hasn't so much as cleaned, let alone used the regen on.

"Let me clean that up?" He offers, pushing her hair out of her face to get a better look at the cut. "Where's the regen?"

"It's fine." She brushes him off.

"Una." He says firmly, well aware of her propensity for hiding injuries and not accepting help until she has no choice, lest she is thought weak. She's a lot better about it than she used to be, but not always.

"Chris." She echoes his tone, holds his gaze for a moment and then sighs, looks away "It shorted out while I was doing your shoulder." She admits.

"You should have looked after yourself first." He tells her, and she smacks him lightly on the good shoulder

"You don't get to tell me that." She says, "I've read your medical file."

They lapse into silence. It's not the first time they've been captured, not by a long shot. At least time neither of them are more seriously injured this time around. After a while, Una gives him her report. It doesn't look good. The cell is stone all the way around; the bars on the window too well embedded into the wall for them to shift, and even if they _could _reach the window, it's too small for even Una to climb out of, let alone Chris. The door is thick and solid, Una is fairly sure she heard multiple locks when they were thrown in there. No escape that way. Their phasers and communicators are gone, but the rest of the supplies in Una's survival pack have been left untouched, which says to Chris that whoever their captors are, they understand what will and won't be of use in an escape attempt. Water purification tabs, a thermal blanket, ration paste, and a regen aren't going to help them break out of here.

Their captors also haven't been seen, or heard, from since they locked the cell door.

"What could they possibly want?" Chris muses. He's not really asking, more thinking aloud, but Una answers anyway.

"Us off their planet?" She suggests, raises an eyebrow.

"Well clearly."

The lock clunks.

Both Chris and Una tense up immediately, their eyes going to the door.

The door creaks open. Chris and Una scramble haphazardly to their feet. Chris tries to push Una behind him, but she steps up beside him without a backwards glance to tell him to stop being an idiot.

Their captors are tall and thin, almost insectoid, and they appear to communicate with each other in a series of low clicking noises, and smooth, almost graceful gestures. They remind Chris of stick insects.

"Can you understand me?" He asks them. "I'm Captain Christopher Pike of the Federation Starship _Enterprise_. We're not here to hurt you, we just wanna talk." 

The closest alien makes a guttural hissing growl. It doesn't sound friendly. It reaches for Chris, and Una steps in between them.

"No." She says firmly, "Leave him alone."

"Una." Chris mutters, "Stay back."

The lead alien gets up in Una's face, lets out another snarl. Una bares her teeth and growls right back at it, unafraid.

A reaction ripples through the group, the leader and the two behind it making more of the low clicks and quiet gestures, and then the leader steps aside, allowing it's two subordinates to grab Una by the arms, and drag her from the cell. She puts up a good fight, twisting and kicking out with their hold, but their grip is too strong.

Chris surges forward in a mad rush, not really thinking, charging at the alien leader. It's like hitting a brick wall. He stumbles back, and the leader steps easily into his space, not bothering to rush, and shoves him down towards the ground, one long "hand" pressing against his bad shoulder, making pain flare, bright and powerful, until it's replaced with darkness.

~*~

He regains consciousness to the sound of a slamming door and sharp, pained breaths. When he forces his eyes open, it's to see Una, hunched in a ball, in the corner of the cell. Her knees are drawn up to her chest, her arms wrapped right around them, her head bent and her hair falling in a curtain around her face.

"Una?" Chris asks, and when she looks at up him her eyes are bloodshot, and the cut on her face has reopened.

He stands, manages to cross the cell to her side. Her breathing is laboured and shallow, and when he reaches for her, she curls against his side and wraps her hand around his.

"Hey." He says.

"Ow." She mutters, when he squeezes her hand gently. Her voice is rough and raw and quiet. He doesn't want to think about why that might be, "Next time, you get to be the punching bag." She tells him, and there's a little twist to her lips, not quite a smile but something close to it, even if it doesn't make it all the way to her eyes, "Don't start." She adds, when he draws breath to stay worrying about her, "I've had worse."

"That doesn't make it better." He points out. He should have been the one taking the hits. It's his responsibility as captain to look after his crew.

"Just be quiet and hold me." Una says, wriggling sideways until she's tucked tight against his side, her head on his shoulder, "You're warm and I'm bruised."

Night falls, and they're still curled up together. Moonlight, or something like it, gradually fades in through the bars of the cell, lighting the little space in an eerie glow. Una dozes against his side, and Chris watches the door and tries not to imagine all the ways he could have revenge on their captors for killing and hurting his people. He's supposed to be better than that, but in the darkness when there's no-one to tell him not to, there's a certain satisfaction to thinking about blowing them up or blasting them out an airlock.

"Captain!"

At first, Chris thinks he's hallucinating, because Spock is telling him off for his violent thoughts. Then, he realises that the voice is real, and that it's coming from above him. He scrambles to his feet, disturbing Una, looks up to the window. Silhouetted against the moonlight, Spock is peering through the bars.

"Spock!" Chris calls back, "How did you find us?"

"Lieutenant S'Len activated the shuttle's distress beacon from orbit." Spock explains, "Once we were able to perform a rescue, she reported that you had been taken. A bio-scan revealed your location to us, however, geographical interference prevented the use of a transporter. I have a beacon, which, when activated, should boost the signal sufficiently for you to be transported out."

"Throw it down then." Chris says, and Spock tosses a small box through the bars. Chris catches it, fumbles, and Una grabs it before it can break on the stone floor. She looks it over, nods.

"Excellent work, Lieutenant." She calls up to Spock, who accepts the praise with a slight nod.

"Spock to Enterprise, ready for transport." He says into his communicator. 

Chris squeezes Una's hand, and she squeezes back as the air around them starts to glow. 

They're going home. 

**Author's Note:**

> Want to know more about Trektober? Click [HERE](https://aishahiwatari.tumblr.com/post/188059640163/trektober) for the info post on Aisha's tumblr, or [HERE](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/Trektober2019) for the AO3 collection to read our fic. 
> 
> Come yell at me on [Tumblr](https://demerite.tumblr.com/)!


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